Generally, information can be transmitted over a communication network according to several different methods such as a circuit-switched connection or packet-switched scheme. When using a packet-switched transmission, the information to be transmitted is usually segmented into packets which are transmitted to the terminating or any intermediate network entity. The information elements to be transmitted, such as messages, data, packets and the like, may be temporarily buffered in a transmit buffer which outputs the information elements to the network in accordance with appropriate conditions such as flow rate and the like.
When a high amount of information elements is to be transmitted using a transmit buffer, there is a certain probability of loss of information elements when the transmit buffer reaches a filling or overflow condition. When trying to relieve this problem by increasing the buffer capacity, the hardware requirements are disadvantageously increased, and the delay between inputting of information elements into the transmit buffer, and output thereof is significantly increased. The resulting delay may in some cases be too high for real-time traffic such as voice data transmission.